This thread is for discussions AFTER the next press conf.

Doug

Next update briefing on NASA TV is scheduled to 2pm EDT (6pm UTC).
Source: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/MM_NTV_Breaking.html

Wow, MRO caught Phoenix in flight!

Amazing !!!

yeah, amazing!!

WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!

"I know you don't like our engineering images" - Barry Goldstein

LOVING the 'odd couple' double act with Barry and Pete

is that enhanced? it looks even better than the released image

OMG, it is good that I only have to type.
Having problems speaking after looking at that HiRise image !!!
Amazing !!!!

Straight from NASA. There's two versions - one is too stretched.

I would say that image is very close to the chute deployment - it doesn't - to my eyes - look 100% fully deployed.

Doug

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/phoenix/image...-PHX_Lander.jpg

At high speed, would the chute have a different shape than at lower speed? (Don't know, just asking)

sunspot - that was the one i was looking at...far less details.

yeah, the parachute looks pretty small (not fully extended), but my guess would be that a parachute would be half-opened only for a second or so. hmmmm...

Was phoenix (while under parachute) near the edge of the MRO image? The animation in the press conference as it zoomed in seemed to indicate that Phoenix was very close to the edge of the image, which means that they may have been lucky to get an image at all and almost missed Could this be a result of it landing long?

(I.E. The press release image was a 420x446 crop of a much larger MRO image. Was this crop in the far right bottom corner, almost off the image, as it seemed to me from the zoom in animation?)

Chutes are subject to partial opening ("squidding") in some speed regimes. I'm wondering if this may be some evidence of that.

Agree, looks still more angular than round.

Wow!!!

It's a possibility - it would, after all, be a long shot to get it in that 1 or 2 seconds of deployment. Idle speculation (And I've got $5 that says that far field feature is the heatshied)

scaled, no other processing.
Click to view attachment

Incedible, just incredible, and amazing

Yeah, the MER chutes had some serious squidding issues in the design phase. There is some footage of this in the wind tunnel tests somewhere.

Emily has a good quality image up:

the more i look at that image, the more it looks like phoenix is hanging under a giant muffin!

I was thinking how it looks like a jellyfish

Though they did have major squidding issues on the chute for the MERs I was under impression that the effect was much better understood now so if this MRO image is of squidding (as it does indeed look like it is) it either caught the chute JUST after deployment OR there is a ring included on the lines for the chute which forces squidding to occur at high speed until speed is lower so that tearing doesn't occur. A video of this mechanism is here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAwET3Q9Og4 showing it on an emergency small plane chute. If this mechanism was included on the Phoenix EDL system it would DRASTICALLY increase the squidding time beyond the usual couple seconds intentionally..... though I don't know if this actually was part of the chute design. Here is a better video of the mechanism http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mt4biNan_JA

Well Emily settled that - no squidding.

haha good pick-up emily! aaaah gotto love the internet. no squidding then

Did I hear them correctly? Phoenix landed just outside the landing ellipse?

He didn't really giver her a committal answer at all though. I'm sure they have information on the exact time the image was taken and they obviously have the exact chute deployment time from Phoenix transmissions and the image is certainly of sufficiently high resolution to to make measurements on deployment completeness, so the question of what is going on in this picture should be definitively answered in due time when they've had a chance to more carefully look at things.

What an amazing image. I am speechless. What humans can do !!!

The droptests on earth shows complete deployment in up to 15 seconds. In lower density (but higher speeds) i can imagine it takes even longer. But it looks like "the muffin" shows us it must have been taken in the first half of it's way down. I guess even on mars a parachute in equilibrium looks like a bowl, not like a muffin.

By the way: It's a pitty this doesn't work: looks like a new image to me of the workspace area, but i cannot open it !

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/.../testindex.html

Marcel

Stunning achievement, the parachute image. To my recollection, I'm not aware of any image of a spacecraft parachuting to Earth taken from Earth orbit. Can anyone correct me here? If I'm right, that would make this an even more remarkable achievement!

I thought the same at first, but I think is just a test page and that's a picture from one of the Mars Rovers!

I don't even remember seeing images of the Shuttle, taken by an earth orbiter. And just think how many times that could have been tried.

It was great seeing Enily at the Press Conference. And even better that she could interact with UMSF during the conference, and then have the ammo for a final question. What a great forum.

That looks a LOT like an ORT test to me. Earth based testing pictures, not new imagery from Phoenix. Don't expect any new images for another 5 hours or so.

Any suggestions for how to pass the time while waiting for new images?

5 Hours!!!!! And I didnt get to bed until 6.30am this morning lol

Darn, Europe-friendly again...

I wonder if MPL landed outside of it's landing ellipse, so they may have been looking in the wrong place. Also, it will be interesting to see how the visibility of the hardware changes over many Martian seasons, it may givemore clues on what to look for at the MPL site..

Agreed on the issue of weathering parachutes, there, Sunspot. We know what the weathered Viking, MPF and MER 'chutes look like, but we've not seen one that was encased in dry ice for months and then "thawed" out.

-the other Doug

Merge of the two versions with smoothed terrain and artificial colors:
Click to view attachment

"This is the first time that a spacecraft has imaged the final descent of another spacecraft onto a planetary body. "

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/phoenix/images.php?fileID=9257

Marvelous...just utterly marvelous, is all. What an achievement!!!

To see that image and imagine Pheonix blazing through the athmosphere at high speed, bracing itself for landing, caught in that instant, is absolutely spellbinding

2 (?) ISS Soyuz missions ago, there was some nice footage of the capsule re-entry over earth's night side. The Soyuz re-entry module flight was not that spectacular, and as a manned vehicle, inappropriate for discussion here in any regard. However, the then unmanned orbital module was jettisoned and followed a similar trajectory and burned up very nicely. Amazing footage shot from orbit.

I don't think the footage ran past the 'burning up' part of the flight.

It blows the mind to image how complex this must have been. Pointing the spacecraft at the right place, the right time, getting it to move the right speed (It is, after all, a pushbroom), all while keeping radio contact with the spacecraft... It blows the mind, for sure. Can't wait till the whole image is released to see if we can see the heat shield plummeting as well.

I take it there's no feedback re my idea that the bright feature seen on that Phoenix image might be a tall rock I pinpointed on a HiRISE image of the landing zone, then? Oh well, never mind. Maybe the new images - thought they were being released about now? - will shed some light on the matter... hope so... I'm really looking forward to seeing some more views of this intriguing landscape.

I'll have to catch up in the morning, I really need some sleep!

I'm glad you all like that image The MRO/HiRISE team is so amazing. A couple of folks from MRO contacted me a few weeks ago and told me how easy it would be to get and then they asked if I would try to make it happen .. so I did. It almost didn't happen (it was a very late request on my part), but I pushed for it ... although it IS a cool image, I wanted to means to vindicate the parachute in the unlikely event that we lost contact with PHX then had a bad landing day .... this would have proven that the parachute still deployed properly and hence would have not been an additional burden for the MSL EDL team. I am thankful that the image is now only "cool" and not a key data point for fault reconstruction. (oh I am so happy about landing too!!!! it was a blast last ... my knees almost gave out)

Emily, I heard your question (I am in Tuscon now - just flew in from Pasadena) in the press conference on the shape of the chute. The pixel count looks about right for a properly inflated parachute (I did the image estimation a couple of weeks ago) but I promise that we will do the math and check that it is not doing anything odd. We need to correlate the image time with the EDL timeline ... work ahead. The PHX EDL gang is converging at JPL next week to -ahem- "work" (between cheers) on doing the full reconstruction and to write a paper on EDL (I failed to make this happen on MER)! I am so excited for them. I will hang out with them and watch over their shoulders (I am off PHX and working MSL except for this week).

I need to grab lunch before we start up in the SOC ... have fun! I am !!

-Rob Manning

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Comments are those of the author and do not represent the views of NASA, JPL nor Caltech.

This just in:



Seriously though, agreed--can't wait to see better photos of it. JPL et al have done it again!

Me too! That heat shield is not far away.

(right on wrt the pushbroom ... we had to rotate MRO about the HiRISE boresight axis to get the image to not smear ... that was not in the plan until a couple of weeks ago.)

-Rob M.

Rob, does the relative velocity between the pushbroom camera and Phoenix mean that the image is distorted at all (or, conversely, to get it accurate, you had to distort the background)? Like those weird pictures of athletes at the finishing line - not a bad analogy, come to think of it.

Inspired by that photo (and Stu's poems) I decided to have a go


EDL

Flame licked
I carved a tunnel trough ice cold air
Awake. After sleep untold in darkness
Alone

Through my yellow haze I saw
Red
Plains and mountains, earth renewed
Looming closer

I bit into the air, mouthfuls
crashing into my stomach
made fire by my sheer might
spit sparks, ate heat

Ate heat till full
Until no more
Embraced the air. We fell together

Grabbed it like a jealous lover
Fought it, loved it, held it in my prison
Fast furious roar in my ears
Pulled back into the silence above

A sudden jolt
A sudden stillness, a red warm stilness
Then fall

The rushing emptiness below
me
Urgent cries from my belly
yellow cries of shouldering heat

I shouted fire towards the ground
told it run to me no more
run not my new friend
I will walk to you,

slowly

gently

the way you approach a dangerous animal
step by step against the wind

one two three four
sunken sounds against the sand
the air stopped
silence

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